Sports Talk : Ailing Jaime Jarrin Is Eager to Return to Game Broadcasts

You would have to give your memory a serious workout to recall the last time Jaime Jarrin, the longtime Spanish-language broadcaster, missed calling the action during a regular season Dodger game before this year.

But that all changed three months ago for the man who was thrust into the national spotlight as the interpreter for Fernando Valenzuela when the Mexican pitcher was the center of the Fernandomania craze in 1981.

Jarrin, 56, has missed the first part of the 1990 major league baseball season while recuperating from an automobile accident March 26 in Vero Beach, Fla., where the Dodgers were holding spring training.

The accident left the popular Ecuador-born broadcaster with a lacerated liver, ruptured spleen, fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. He underwent surgery after the head-on collision that night and again a few weeks later to clear a life-threatening intestinal abscess.

The play-by-play duties have fallen to the voices of veteran Rene Cardenas and Tito Rondon, Jarrin’s replacement. But Jarrin says he would like to get behind the microphone by sometime in July.

“It depends on how fast I recover,” Jarrin said. “Right now I’m hoping.”

Some, however, wonder whether Jarrin can recuperate that soon to be able to handle the rigors of long plane trips, bus rides and lots of walking and standing while conducting interviews in the locker room and on the field.

“The daily routine we have is intense,” said the Nicaragua-born Cardenas, one of the leading and most durable Spanish-language baseball broadcasters in the United States. He has narrated Dodgers and Houston Astros games for more than three decades. “I don’t know how he would adjust to it. It won’t be easy.”

Difficult yes, impossible no. At least not for Jarrin, who two years ago suffered another devastating setback when the oldest of his three sons, Jimmy, died of an aneurysm.

That, Jarrin told a reporter a few weeks later, was the most painful experience of his life.

Now, those emotional wounds have been joined by physical ones that nearly killed him.

“The doctor told me it is a miracle that I’m alive,” Jarrin said. “When he first examined me, he thought he couldn’t save me because of the internal hemorrhage I suffered.”

Jarrin said he recalls the accident vividly, and particularly the terrifying aftermath.

“I remember the impact very well. After the impact, I thought I was going to die right there because I was lacking air. I couldn’t breathe. Everything turned black, and I passed out.”

The 60-year-old Cardenas, who has teamed with Jarrin for 13 years, was getting ready for bed in his room at Dodgertown when he learned of the accident.

“I heard about it at around 10 that night,” Cardenas recalled. “I went to the hospital immediately.

Cardenas visited his partner daily at the hospital and then stayed in contact with Jarrin’s wife, Blanca, who remained in Vero Beach after the Dodgers broke camp in April to start National League play. He said Jarrin’s spirits sank after the second operation.

“He was hoping for a faster recuperation. He was pretty depressed,” Cardenas said.

But Jarrin said recently that his outlook--both physically and mentally--is on the upswing.

For those who tune to the games on KWKW Radio, those are encouraging words. With any luck, by the All-Star break they’ll hear again the familiar voice that for 30 years has been telling them how the Dodgers fare on the ball field.